A treaty is an act of faith and a commitment, the cover copy of Armand Garnet Ruffo’s fifth collection reminds us. But many of these lyrical, deeply reflective poems also “peel back memory,” as Ruffo struggles to make peace with his own past. These poems of love, service-industry jobs and small-town boredom (now in Vancouver, she grew up “living in Alaska’s armpit” in Kitimat, B.C.) Gwathmey’s surrealistic flights of fancy can be obscure — he even seems to slyly acknowledge this in the title poem, where he writes of “too many/what-ifs” — but they are unfailingly lively. The sensuous, frolicking shapes of Constellations, in particular, inspire an intriguing sequence of meditations on “what is behind what you see.“ In one poem, Carson describes Miró as “trafficking in the intangible” — Carson does the same in this ambitious book.

Source: thestar April 24, 2019 15:11 UTC